just tried turning the wheel to open the bail before casting and the bail will open but if you stop it from sinking and try to open it again it wont reopen tried rolling the wheel a ways after casting still nothing

After about a dozen start-up trips on different lakes, I'd say that at its current build, the game leans too heavily towards bait-fishing. My fav lures at my fav spots got me nada, but toss in a nightcrawler on a bobber and BAM! That was true on lake after lake...I was driving towards the creek on Thompson Res. when I ran out of gas. Since there are no oars(Hey, how about oars? Who goes out on a lake without oars?) I restarted and tried to buy gas. I was about 49 cents short of being able to purchase the six gallons I needed. (Psst, hey buddy, got a buck?). We should be able to buy even just one gallon of gas. It is not important after one's character is well along, but, starting out, every dollar is important. I had to go back to the dock, put on my last nightcrawler and-sure enough- BAM! A money fish. Had I just lures, I don't think it would have worked out as well...The gas shortage got me thinking about the baitshop. The owner/clerk could eventually use some personality. Like, "Hey buddy, they're really hitting on spinnerbaits this week, I got a sale going on." That sort of thing. Even just "Word Balloon" action as all the voice-overs for different clerks would be a bit much I guess. And in my situation, 'Looks like you're a bit short, but I'll sell you a couple of gallons to get you by." Service like that is good for business. Heh. Or, just for fun, "Man, is that all you got? -Grumble- Ok,, ok, anything to get you out of my shop and out on the lake. Out of towners..."

Good suggestions - If you can't afford a full tank it should offer you how ever much you can afford.

I'm not sure why the artificials aren't producing for you, but it could be that presentation is just so much easier with live bait. A nightcrawler is highly effect sitting motionless, while artificial lures need the right amount of motion to get the best action, though you'll often get hits on the pause. I'll have a look and see about tuning the responsiveness to both artificials and natural baits. Nothing changed in the game with regard to how fish react to artificials, but perhaps by comparison they now seem less effective.

What do you think about banning live bait from tournaments? That's often the case in real life since fish are more likely to take live bait deeply and get mortally wounded compared to fish caught on artificials.

Oars would be nice. Or somebody could offer to tow you back for a few bucks. =)

The clerk comes from Ice Fishing Derby, and there she makes a lot of comments while you're shopping. It wouldn't be too hard to do the same. Another thing that can happen in Ice Fishing Derby is your live bait can die in the bucket. That might be worth including in VRS too, along with a limited life span for a tub of nightcrawlers in the boat, and limit of how much of each bait type you can carry (too many minnows in a bucket and they'll all die.) By adding some of the real-world drawbacks of using live bait it may help the balance between bait and lures.

The "Bass in hand" effect hit today. Caught a smallmouth at Thompson Res, and the fisherman did not let it go. It was a nice floppy one too, so had an extra fish in hand everytime I landed one.'Yes, I recall the shopkeeper from IFD, and that would be a nice addition here. Not as a erplacement of the guide, just an enhancement, sometimes with accurate, othertimes not so accurate info..Well, I've fished the game a lot now, and when the bait is out-fishing the lures about 20 to 0, it seems something is up..Bait dying is good, smelly though. I did see a FLW tournament for Walleye that included live bait. This one old guy was cathing five pounders on live leeches from a bobber. An option for some tournaments to use live bait would be ok. Never seen a bass tourney with live bait though. The odd rule there was:No Culling. You keep it, it stays. Up to eight fish, with weighing five. Once you kept your 8th fish, you were done. Guys were tossing back two pounders early on, believing they would catch bigger later. Lots of strategy there..I don't know exactly where you want to go with this game, Paul, or what plans you have for a future game, but the basis you have here is solid. However, I wonder about how folks would react to a game that was about what fishing really is? My brother and I learned most of our fishing from "Man's Favorite Sport", and old Rock Hudson flick. Fishing is snarls and breaking off your favorite lure on a bad cast. Its catching your line on someones lost line, with their 6 lb carp still attached(And landing it, my brother did that.). Its dragging your anchor half a mile across the lake, forgetting you still had it down. Catching a tree, with your lure hanging over the water, and having a fish hit it. Catching your partners hat and almost tossing it in, then having the best bassing day of your life(100 fish apiece, no lie). Catching a ten pound bass on the smallest lure you got, but breaking your rod in the process. All of us fisherman have a thousand thousand tales to tell, some of which include actually catching a fish. (Bill dance's outtake videos are priceless in this regard). But compared to the average fishing trip, shooting zombies in your typical game is a piece of cake. I wonder what an Action/Fishing game would be like?

My top water frogs dont work nearly like they used to. Thought maybe it was because of the weather or time of day.Just finished a small fishing adventure. I Was using a top water frog. My first cast resulted in catching a bass immediately. I must have casted another 10 times after that with no results..I was watching the lure as I was reeling in and there were fish everywhere. They were just ignoring the lure.

I don't know about anyone else but the dificulty of the game seems to have increased. I have it on beginer and I can't catch a thing and my lure gets hooked about 12 times every cast, but if I use live bait it dosn't get hooked and i catch somthing almost instanly.

I'm looking into this. None of the changes in these two updates should really effect the behavior of artificial lures, but there were a lot of changes and something certainly could be amiss, which is why the updates are officially beta. I did a little testing with lures today and did OK, but maybe there are certain cases where it's not working as it should.

I tried some artificials today and i caught a good many fish.You guys might want to try talking to the guide and see what he says to use especially the colors of lures.A lot of times there are a lot of fish around in an area,but there is usually several schools of panfish and there might be only one or two bass lurking around.A lot of times in real life live bait will outfish artificials every time.You just have to focus on what time of year it is,time of day,and what the fish want.Troll around find some good cover and cast,then cast again.By the way one of my go to lures in real life and this game is a spinnerbait and it will rarely let you down.

Good for you. I was one of the original Beta testers of this game, and I am reporting what I believe is an imbalance in gameplay in the current build. I cleared out my old copy and reinstalled fresh. I have put a lot of hours on these lakes, and for whatever reason, it fishes different now. I'm talking the same spots loaded with bass and pike ignoring frogs and spinnerbaits they would have swallowed before. But those same fish go for the bait. ***The guide may have his uses, but if he is crucial to catching fish now, then that has changed as well. Never needed him before except to locate certain species at specific times of year. ***We all have an obligation as Beta-Testers to report our experiences to Paul, and then it is up to him to deal with them as he sees fit. It is not our job to jump to conclusions about the experiences others report.

Mr. Fisherman you are right we are all entitled to our obligations and our inputs go in to keep making this game better.Ill be honest with you i dont play this game very much i am a busy but observant person.But here are some of my inputs of what ive seen from playing the game so far.Before the last two updates i noticed especially on Harris lake to the west around the grass and stumps.There were bass everywhere and they would hit almost anything you casted at them.This seemed true for a lot of the lakes except the more open clear northern lakes you had to troll and search for the fish a little harder.But when the last update that Paul had put out a month or two ago.I noticed especially on Harris lake there did not seem to be near as many bass or either they were really spread out more.But i thought maybe this was intentionally done to make the game more realistic.Also i have noticed something from when i first fished this game and recently on the new Reservoir.I hooked a 5lb 2oz smallmouth and as i was pulling the fish in i saw 3 more fish spawn off of this fish and caught all of them and they were exactly the same size.Now to me that is a bad bug and definately needs to be fixed and i had informed Paul about that when the game first came out.I think that is why i dont play this game that much and mostly find myself playing RWFF.That took the relistic aspect out of the game for me,but hopefully it can be fixed.Also i would like to see baitfish in the game and gamefish feeding or schooling on them that would be awesome.Another thing i would like to see is the bass or musky jump out of the water shake its head and spit the hook every now and then.Especially if you didnt get a good hookset or maybe the fish just got lucky like in real life fishing.I am not saying for this to happen 75%,50%,or even 25% of the time.But what about 15% or 20 % of the time,and the truth is in real life it does happen.About the spawning fish i have not seen anybody post about this bug have you guys seen this?All in all it is a great game and will get better.Thanks to Paul for his hard work and everyone who has worked on this sim.RWFF is a truly amazing sim and ive never seen anything quite like it.Tight lines and keep fishing theres a lunker still swimming.

I agree with Mr Fisherman also. As I said in a earlier post, My tried a true frogs no longer seem to work very well. I have not consulted the guide as I never had to do it before. I am fishing at the same spot using the same topwater frog, fish are swimming all over the place, but no luck. Something has changed. However, when I use a worm or even a minnow, look out....I also experienced the spawning problem. However, I havent seen it in the last couple of updates.